In autumn 1979 the revolutionary government of Iran waged war against the United States by invading and occupying its embassy in Tehran and holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. That act of war was recognized for what it was
A lesson for the ages has unfolded in Libya. Moammar Qaddaffi, erstwhile terrorist and dictator, observed the activity of the United States in Iraq post 2003 and decided the time had come for him to be rehabilitated. He came in
When the President publicly ordered the leaders of the House and the Senate to appear at the White House the next day, prepared to answer his demands for a debt ceiling resolution, many observers noted the high-handedness of his way
Governor Romney’s 10th Amendment defense of Massachusetts’s health care reform legislation serves well to clarify the true nature of the fundamental political question that confronts Americans in year 222 under the Constitution. That is a simple question with a profound
The Obama Administration has stumbled into a regional war (and potentially a world war) in the Middle East. Libya is not a case of democratic reform. And the casual language of “reform by protest” and so-called “universal values” has served
Governor Reagan – that’s how we referred to him for the fourteen years before he became President – made us one with him from the beginning. The highest moment of my personal appreciation arrived on election night in 1966. It
James Agee’s novel, “A Death in the Family’” has a wonderfully illustrated nihilistic moment in which the father goes into the darkened bedroom of his child to console the child in an episode of fear of bogey monsters in the
In the beginning the United States governed its place in the world by the perception of strategic vulnerability to hostile influences from nations in Europe. George Washington played for time for the nation, initially unsafe at home, to recruit its
January 1, 2011 opens President Obama’s campaign for re-election. Everything he does will be calculated to further the objective of re-election. Accordingly, his goal will be to minimize exposure to negative review and to maximize opportunity to capitalize on any
Wikileaks finally dropped the motherlode. What next? Judgment. What effect? Whose error? We should quickly dispense with the criminal charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning, assigning proper sentence for his serious violations. And anyone else subject to United States jurisdiction and
It was “very, very bad behavior” for North Korea to fire artillery at South Korean soldiers and civilians on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island, according to the U. S. Department of State. State appreciates that North Korea has inverted the trope
Defense News reported Nov. 4th that “Obama Wants Current Senate To Pass Russia Treaty.” New START strikes a foreign policy pose without accomplishing a significant strategic purpose. Although President Obama wishes to push the draft treaty through the lame-duck Senate
The current Weekly Standard (October 4, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 03) carries a piece by Henry Olsen (a vice president at the American Enterprise Institute), “As Sweden Goes…The Worldwide Tea Party.” This excellent analysis of recent center-right electoral victories and
What makes bad politics is bad arguments and bad choices, not bad fathers. Some people said with complete earnestness that George W. Bush invaded Iraq to revenge Sadaam Hussein’s attempted assassination of Mr. Bush’s father, former President George H. W.
I cannot accept the premise that causing “outrage to Muslims” is reason enough to condemn the burning some paper and ink. Nor would the matter differ if someone threatened to burn the Bible. A thing that has been done —
The most important passage in President Obama’s “end of war” speech declares that there are no longer “surrender ceremonies”, which he seems to interpret to mean that there are no longer “celebrations of victories.” Victory, he suggests, consists in the
What if there were still a Soviet Union assessing its strategic position in the world by the well-known “correlation of forces.” If the United States asked itself how it stood within that Soviet perspective, there is at least one dimension
The Australian reports today that the Obama Administration objected, not to the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, not on grounds that he should be held in a Scottish prison but only that he should not be held
In 1793 George Washington, President of the United States, set forth in his role as “Commander in Chief” to lead a military force into western Pennsylvania to suppress violent resistance to federal authority during the famous “Whisky Rebellion.” The authority
The Soviet Union coined the term “national technical means” to convey a clear and appropriate concept — namely, sovereign states maintain exclusive control over certain agencies that can be applied to determine outcomes in certain situations. Applying this understanding to
It is not true that General McChrystal demonstrated insubordination (as too many commentators held), and if we remember the long train of events launched in the fall of 2008 and concluding in McChrystal’s dismissal, we will readily understand that. First,